Professional Chewing gum industry meeting point

More news on this interesting topic have been published by confectionery news.com (see link).

Wrigley has filed a patent describing a new degradable gum. The way this is achieved is by formulating the gum base with “block polymers”. The company claims that the resulting product is more easily removed from surfaces such as sidewalks (in 20 seconds a high pressure hot water jet can remove more than 80% of the material)

According to wikipedia:

“Block copolymers comprise two or more homopolymer subunits linked by covalent bonds (4). The union of the homopolymer subunits may require an intermediate non-repeating subunit, known as a junction block. Block copolymers with two or three distinct blocks are called diblock copolymers and triblock copolymers, respectively.”

In this particular patent, the company uses polymers of at least 4 blocks composed of at east 2 different monomer systems.

The articles from confectionerynews.com mentions as well other companies that presented progresses on this controversial field of the chewing gum business (Mondelez, Revolymer, TNO, RSSL, GumLink, Fertin Pharma, University College Cork) . I also posted in the past about those patents and inventions.

So for those of you interested on the subject, here is a link to confectionerynews.com which informs about a new patent being filed by Mondelez on this matter.

As you know, this is a hot subject and many companies are working on developing this type of gum which would be more environmentally friendly. There is a product already in the market, Rev7 but it does not seem to really take off. In fact it has been withdrawn from the US market. All the research turn mainly about news types of polymers. There are many polymers which degrade easier than the ones currently in use, but they do not offer an acceptable chewability. So the main task is to find a polymer with the right degradability and nice chew profile. In this case, the article and the related patent mentions “alternating copolymer of C2-C10 alkene and maleic anhydride”.

A “deviation” form the issue of biodegradable chewing gum is the controversy about taxes applied to the product.

Some politicians claim that, as one can find chewing gum stuck everywhere on the streets, and this cost money to remove, then a tax should be imposed on the sale of gum. The money collected from this tax will be “supposedly” used to clean the streets. The issue was on the news some time ago in relation to Ireland and Wales. Now, two more news appeared recently with the same discussion, this time related to Mexico and Northern Ireland (see links from Confectionerynews.com below). As many of you may already know, Singapore is the only country where chewing gum is officially banned, except for those with health claims, which can be sold in pharmacies.

Wrigley is the strongest fighter against those policies and supports educational programs instead of taxes (which reach 50% on top of the retail price in case of Mexico!).

So I guess until nobody finds a successful biodegradable chewing gum (or should I say simply “degradable chewing gum”?), we will find these type of discussions here and there.

It has been many years that the main players in the chewing gum field are researching in this direction, with many filed patents but limited results in the market. As the issue become hotter and hotter, maybe we can really see something relevant in the market soon….

Kraft (via RSSL center in UK) is looking for novel food approval for a new gum base recently developed. This gum base seems to contain a polymer currently used in cosmetic (oral care) products. You can read the article here:

Following the interesting thread from last post, I attach a link to an article about “Revolymer”, which promotes the polymer named Rev7 and claims that this material can degrade after a couple of years on the pavement.

According to the article, chewing gums containing the novelty can be found in some shops in USA (also named “Rev7”).